1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic timepieces and more particularly to an electronic timepiece which can provide an analog display of time by a pointer on the one hand and can digitally display a time set for emitting an alarm by a electrooptical display element or a light transfer element such as a liquid crystal, electrochromism, light emitting diode, etc. on the other hand.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In such kind of timepiece, it has heretofore been required to provide an electromechanical time keep mechanism for keeping a time information such as "hour", "minute" displayed by an analog pointer and an electrical memory circuit for memorizing a time set for emitting an alarm. A difficult problem has heretofore been encountered with measures how to compare and detect the time information of "hour", "minute" and the time set for emitting the alarm.
In order to solve such problem, attempts have been made to provide a mechanism for detecting a pointer position and convert the position thus detected by a mechanoelectrical converter into an electric signal which is then compared with the time set for emitting the alarm, but hitherto none has led to fully satisfactory results owing to the reasons that the detection mechanism is complex in construction and that it is impossible to set the time for emitting the alarm up to 1 minute unit.
In addition, the conventional timepiece has the drawback that if a battery source is exhausted in use and hence the timepiece becomes stopped, both the electromechanical time keep mechanism and the electrical time keep mechanism become out of order.